1) When I see a see a sunrise, I'm moved to: A. Compose a poem. B. Try and capture beauty with my paints and brush. C. Stumble drunkenly into bed -- boy that party was a lot of fun. D. Cover my face with my pillow and go back to sleep. Who in their right mind gets up early enough to look at sunrises?

2) At work, I'm person my coworkers go to when they need someone to: A. Think up a new theme for office party (especially if they want it to be a bit wild and off wall). B. Get people excited for party. C. Organize party. D. Clean up after party.

3) In school, I was considered one of the: A. Brains. B. Jocks. C. Nerds. D. Nothing. I was kicked out my sophomore year.

Now take this test again and write down what you think a creative person would choose as his or her answer.

Scoring: Well, there's no real scoring here. The point is to get you thinking about creativity and stereotypes.

In another creativity article I wrote, "Quiz: Are Your Creative?", I pointed out that biggest difference between creative people and those who aren't is creative people believe they're creative and uncreative people believe they aren't.

But, it's one thing to say it and something completely different to live it.

I believe one of things that prevent people from fully realizing their creative potential is idea of stereotypes. They think they cannot be creative because they don't look, act, live, etc., a certain way. And, unfortunately, that belief can become so powerful it truly does cripple their creativity.

Let's take a closer look at these three stereotypes.

1) When I see a sunrise…

You can still be a creative person and not be moved to paint a sunrise or write a poem about it. Everyone is different and everyone draws their creativity from different things. Me, you couldn't catch me anywhere near a sunrise without an IV drip of coffee in my arm. And even if that did happen, I'd be lucky if I could reach creativity level of a turnip.

The point is every muse is different and every muse dances to a different drum (or maybe it's not even a drum, maybe it's a French horn.) Sunrises make you yawn? So what? Find what gets your muse dancing and go with it.

2) At work…

My Guru once said that she is inconsolable when she cannot watch Moon rise. That stuck with me.

I, too, have fallen in love with Moon, and now watch for it at night, and on my computer I track cycle of it's fullness each month. I'm becoming more aware of restorative power of this practice of watching. Of course, remembering to step outside at night is another matter. When I'm not too busy, too late, too something.... so I am working on being inconsolable when I cannot watch moon-- when I remember.